488. The ordinals, as in other languages

The ordinals, as in other languages, have other than ordinal offices to fill; and in Sanskrit especially they are general adjectives to the cardinals, with a considerable variety of meanings, as fractionals, as signifyingcomposed of so many partsorso-many-fold, orcontaining so many, or (as was seen above, 479)having so many added.

a. In a fractional sense, the grammarians direct that their accent be shifted to the first syllable: thus,dvítīyahalf;tṛ́tīyathird part;cáturthaquarter; and so on. But in accented texts onlytṛ́tīyathird, andcáturtha(ÇB.) andtúrīyaquarter, are found so treated; forhalfoccursonlyardhá; andcaturthá(MS. etc.),pañcamá, and so on, are accented as in their ordinal use.